Pinup is a web-based canvas for creating and storing sticky notes. Create a new canvas by clicking anywhere on the blank canvas. You can also click and drag your mouse to create a new note from anywhere on the board. Click the plus sign to add a new text pin, and the image symbol below it to add images or a document. Use the menu across the top of the sticky to change the background color, duplicate the pin, move it to another canvas or turn it into a checklist. You can also drag and drop images directly from your desktop. Personalize stickies by changing the color of sticky notes. Edit the text options using bold and strikethroughs. Change the size of your notes quickly and easily. Once you have created more than one canvas, choose the one you want to be your default canvas when you use Pinup. Any device with a web browser can access and use this organizer! Share your canvas with one click by adding email recipients. Note that collaborators must have email addresses.

In the Classroom

There are any number of ways to use Pinup! Introduce how to use Pinup on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Demonstrate how to use the checklist to mark off completed items. Have students use this as a way to organize their reminders and homework. With younger students use with a whole-class email account and list items to be accomplished for the day. Display the list on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Have a student scribe check off completed items. Use this site with a whole-class email account to organize a major research project. Keep track (or share) sites to help students study for the big test. Provide this link on your class website for students (or parents) to access at home. Help students build organizational skills with this engaging and useful tool. If your students have a whole-class email account, use a class canvas to display ideas as student brainstorm or respond from their smart phones (if allowed in class). With the canvas open on a projector (interactive whiteboard), their ideas will appear instantaneously. Use Pinup to display and label images. Beginning ESL/ELL students can drag and drop images and label them in their new language. Use Pinup as and idea bin for writing or projects or any brainstorm list.

Looking for real-time feed back from your classes? Use tests and quizzes to get immediate feedback with this tool. You can even upload a document to Formative for students to annotate. Enter questions that require a variety of answers including true/false, text answers, or student drawings. It will even mark answers for you! Setup a marking key and view instant data on who is correct. Students can create an account to get access to the materials you create. The site works on all devices. Formative is aligned to many standards including Common Core, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and many other common standards. Create a free account. All assignments are organized in the dashboard. Click on New Assignment to begin and choose to start from scratch or upload a document. Choose the type of question and even add content such as text, whiteboard, or YouTube videos. Be sure to set up a key for automatic grading and watch the live results as they come in. Formative is optimized to work on any device with a modern web browser and an Internet connection.

In the Classroom

Use this tool at the beginning of chapters or units to identify information students are already familiar with. Be sure to use this tool to check for understanding. Use as an exit slip, to identify material that needs to be retaught, or to locate specific students that need remediation. Students can easily see the choices and choose answers using a browser on a laptop or any device. Use this formative assessment tool to create pretests to offer to gifted students to "test out" of already learned material. Make it a class challenge! Project your quiz to the entire classroom using a whiteboard or projector. Use this tool often to obtain a snapshot of each student's understanding of content. Use this tool to give students the opportunity to predict the content of tomorrow's lesson based upon today's.

Help Noah learn Spanish with Abuela, Coco, and Pequeno, his Spanish speaking friends. Navigate through interactive games and adventure videos using both Spanish and English. Don't miss the free printables. Find Noah engaged in dialogue saying words in English, a character repeats in Spanish, and Noah repeats the Spanish word. Print-out activities include: coloring a playground by Spanish numbers, learning the names of tools and eating utensils in Spanish, practice Spanish colors, and play Spanish Bingo. Turn on closed captioning to see the Spanish word as it is spoken.

In the Classroom

Add this site to your ESL/ELL classroom computers. Challenge your English speaking students to learn Spanish. Add this information to a flashcard tool such as FlashCard Maker, reviewed here, and let the Spanish begin. Add as an option to your choice (centers) menus to keep students engaged and learning new content. During a multicultural celebration, keep this bookmarked on computers. Share this link on your class website for students to learn more Spanish vocabulary.

Bring the world of music and instruments into your classroom. With Virtual Musical Instruments, you can explore the guitar, piano, pan flute, drums, or bongos. Select the instrument, and follow the directions for using the keyboard to play the different notes. Create different melodies using different notes or rhythms. Use the guitar tuner to be sure you are in tune. There is no record option on this tool. If you want to record your beat, there are many alternative options (such as using a cell phone, iPod, or an old-fashioned recorder).This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Virtual Musical Instruments opens up the world of music into many other subjects. In music class, discover the different instruments, sounds, and rhythms the virtual instruments can produce. Allow your students to make their own compositions. Challenge them to determine a way to give the directions for their composition to another person so that they can repeat the original piece. In language arts class, discuss mood in literature. Determine the instruments used, the rhythms, and sounds needed to make that effect. During Readers' Theater, add a musical score for more excitement and engagement with further analysis of the text. Have students create a musical composition that tells a story. Now, play that musical story for the class, and turn it into a writing prompt. Use musical sounds and beats to illustrate the concepts of literature and the use of plot. Determine a melody for each character. Write to explain why each character has that musical composition. Math class brings the study of fractions with types of notes: whole note, half note, quarter note, and eighth notes. Let students create a musical sentence that represents them and write to explain why. Use whatever recording option is most practical in your classroom.

The Migrant Trail is a reality simulation with the goal of teaching about undocumented Mexican migrants and border patrol officers. See both sides of the situation. Learn what drives migrants to risk their lives to cross the border into the United States. Participate as a border patrol officer. Learn that they do not only apprehend migrants, but also rescue and treat those who suffer from the harsh elements encountered in trying to cross the desert. Participating in this activity is an excellent way to strengthen decision-making skills and at the same time acquire cultural understanding in order to see both sides of the issue about migration from Mexico. A documentary on PBS titled The Undocumented was the inspiration for this interactive. It is not necessary to view the film to use the interactive.

In the Classroom

Introduce this interactive to students on a projector or interactive whiteboard. You may want to start out as a border patrol officer so students will understand the underlying humanitarianism in this job. The officers in this interactive are empathetic and concerned about the health of the migrants. Have students explore individually or in pairs the different migrants, their history, and decisions they have to make while crossing the desert. Be sure to supply earbuds/headphones or have students silence the audio on the computers. There are short biographies of the migrants. Pair weaker readers with stronger readers as necessary. The Migrant Trail is an excellent way to make students think about and discuss a real-world issue in a government class. In an economy class, talk about the role of public policy in citizenship and the financial matters that drive the migrants.

Join a nationwide monitoring program designed to track the status and trends of bird biology in nesting and reproduction. Receive instructions to become a certified nest watcher, and report findings on a nest every 3-4 days. Enter findings in a growing database that is used to research and study birds. Receive training on how to track data and what the data could mean. Find different birds with their most recent data. Learn about various birds found in your area. Explore an interactive map of nest size, species, and area by year. Review the different nest watch chapters. There are also webcams watching nests. Some of these are hosted on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable. You could always view the videos at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Want to involve students in a country wide scientific investigation? With Nestwatch, students participate in a genuine scientific study with a prestigious university. All background information for participating is provided, along with detailed instructions for procedural steps. Look at the trends in bird nesting over the years and have students discuss causes for the results. In cooperative learning groups, have students defend a logical reason for the results of your study in a multimedia presentation. Find a tool to create a multimedia presentation using one of many TeachersFirst Edge tools, reviewed here. Use this research style as a model for studying endangered species in your area. Read excerpts from literature to gain further background information including literature such as, Silent Spring by Rachel Carsen. In your schoolyard, choose an area to landscape for birds. Watch for other wildlife in your nest spot.

Kahrds is a learning system based on flashcards you create and then integrate into several game options. Use your Kahrds as flashcards, crosswords, quizzes, hangman, or a quick type activity where the definition is given and you type in the word. Create an account to begin. Create a set of Kahrds. Choose a category and decide on visibility. Options include public, private, or limited viewing. Create your Kahrds by inserting a word and its definition. Add as many words as you like until the set is complete. Most games require a minimum of 5 or more Kahrds in a set. Share sets using the link provided when saving a set. This tool will work on any device that can access the website. Kahrds will work on any device with an Internet connection. Some of the explanation/introduction videos are hosted on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, then they may not be viewable. You could always view the videos at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Create flashcards for your classes -- or have them make their own. Try using them as an introduction to a concept, then again in the practice of the concept, and one more time as a final review. This would be great for teaching Latin prefixes and suffixes, words used in science terms, or for standardized test preparation. Try having students create flashcards and share with each other to quiz themselves within their groups. Show them how to carefully read through their classroom notes and underline the most important word or words in a sentence. Then have them leave out the most important words for their flashcards. Learning support teachers might want to have small groups create cards together to review together before tests. Have students create flashcard sets to "test" classmates on what they "teach" in oral reports.

The Post-It Labeling Tool allows you to annotate images. Upload an image from your computer and add labels to the image. Place the Post-it where needed by dragging and dropping and extending the connecting line. Change the background color of the Post-it from the default yellow to color code items in the image. Find the tools to upload the image, and work with it, in the bottom left corner. Scrolling over the icons will tell you what they are. Save your finished product as a webpage, embed in your blog or wiki, or print. Clicking the green question mark will show you samples. See the example made by a TeachersFirst reviewer here. The Post-It labeling tool is FREE, you can annotate your image and save it without even registering.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Share the Post-It labeling site on your interactive whiteboard or projector to show students how to use the tools. Have students label and identify objects in an image. Label parts of a plant, continents, landforms, etc. Practice new words in world language classes by asking students to label and identify objects in that language. This would make an excellent ESL/ELL formative assessment tool. Create a storyboard using several annotated images as a story starter. Art students can annotate images to point out design elements or annotate images of their work to talk about the creative decisions they made. Share annotated Post-It images on your class website or blog to tell about a field trip or class event.

Create boards of links to your popular tools and bookmarks curated into one beautiful and simple interface! Use Papaly to collect links from Twitter, Facebook, news sites, Pinterest, existing computer bookmarks, and new bookmarks. Follow the pop-up messages to learn the controls from the Tutorial. Hover over Boards to click on the + sign, and then name the new board. Select from popular categories to instantly populate your board with common tools. Import computer bookmarks by installing the Chrome extension or creating an HTML file of them following the tutorial. Click on Board Properties in the upper right corner to change your board to Secret (private), make your board Invisible for Google, alter your settings, and change the layout of the board. Share boards by email, Twitter, or Facebook. Note: If using the boards with students, be sure not to import information from personal sites such as email, Twitter, Facebook, etc. as the login information would be visible to students.

In the Classroom

Create an account to keep track of bookmarks to share with students in your class. Bookmarks can be viewed on any browser, anywhere. Create separate boards for the various projects and units in your class. Add information that is useful for student understanding and application of concepts. Keep the boards and bookmarks throughout the year. Consider creating a board for student current events or happenings. Use this for access to information on various topics such as food issues, diseases, political information, cultures around the world, and more. Create a board with more challenging topics for your gifted and advanced students. Students can create a board of links from the web on a certain topic to share with other classmates. Create a Professional Development board to share with other teachers. Challenge your middle and high school gifted students to curate a board for themselves on a topic of individual interest. For example, a student interested in rocketry can locate and add blogs from rocket scientists, NASA feeds, and more. Talented writers may want to collect links to literary publications and author blogs. Consider creating a login that all students can use in order to add bookmarks that they find useful.

Teampedia is a comprehensive and collaborative resource for finding icebreakers, team building, and leadership activities. Browse through almost 100 categories on this wiki. Find trust activities, getting to know you, and online/remote team building. Explore activities based on the group size involved. If you have a great activity and don't see it, add it to Teampedia by following the steps provided. Each game or activity includes a list of materials needed, number of players, time required, and directions for play. Some directions for strategy games also include strategy options.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use this site to find Icebreaker activities and options for the first week of school community building. Bookmark this tool for the first week of school or any time that you want to experience some "team-building" in your class. Use this site if you have weekly classroom meetings to build relationships among students. Share this site with students and have them create their own games based on research projects or as a review for major tests. Share this site with parent helpers to find ideas for classroom parties.

These high quality, high-resolution photos can be used for free. No worries, it is not a stock photo site. Find a small number of new photos added weekly. Use any photo for either personal or commercial projects. Find a variety of landscapes, animals, people, and situations in the black and white or colored photographs. Though these are free, the work should be attributed to the artist. At the time of this review our editors found nothing inappropriate in the photos. However, we always recommend to PREVIEW!

In the Classroom

Use photos from this site in your PowerPoint slides, web page, blog, etc., and be sure to attribute them. The different concepts of copyright are challenging for young students (below about grade 4). You may want to "collect" some photos for their use and save them locally for them to choose from until they are ready to understand the most difficult copyright issues. Select an image to project onto an interactive whiteboard or projector. Give time for students to develop a story around the picture. Use photos that students can use to demonstrate content in various classes. For example, in science, an image of a cat might be used to explain a classification and other animals related to it or the characteristics of life demonstrated in the image. In an art class, discuss the features of the photograph that are compelling, the use of light, the photo's composition, etc.

PastBook is a wonderful site for creating online photo albums or scrapbooks. The tool was originally intended to create memorial books. Now you can create memory books and even choose a year to display. Choose "Start Now," to begin. Add a title, description, and pictures by uploading from your computer or social network accounts. Provide the text to describe images and a date if desired. When ready, choose "Create Your Book" to complete the book process. View finished books online or download for free in PDF format. Invite others to collaborate on your book through social networking links. Privacy settings allow only those with the URL to view your book. This tool is available on the web and iPhone. It will soon be available for any device. Sign-in using your email or FaceBook account. You can invite people via email or SMS.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use a class PastBook account to keep track of the day-to-day happenings in your classroom (especially for younger grades). Consider creating albums of specific events such as field trips, service projects, hands-on activities, field experiences such as watershed studies, and more. Have students create portfolios for art and photography classes. Create a magazine of photos that portray different history and social topics. Set the scenes for novels or stories. Explain a specific science concept (using Creative Commons images AND proper credit). Anywhere photos can be used to showcase achievement or explain a concept, this service would be an excellent resource. Learning support, speech, ESL/ELL, autistic support, or world language teachers can collect images into "magazines" for students to practice/develop speech and vocabulary.

Ducksters is a safe, extensive, educational portal for kids. Find a wide choice of content such as interactives, sports, movies, and music. Begin by choosing a category to explore choices. The study category includes extensive information such as world history, many biographies, science explanations, and information on all continents and many countries. Interactive subjects include math times tables, checkers, and guess the country. There is a TON here to explore.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

This site is a perfect addition for use with a biography unit. Explore and share information categorized by topics such as Civil Rights, the Cold War, and Ancient Greece. Have students use Fakebook, reviewed here, to create a "fake" page similar in style to Facebook about a president, famous scientist, or nearly any other real or fictitious person. Be sure to create a link to the site on your class webpage or newsletter for students to explore at home. Create a link on classroom computers for students to use the interactives during center time.

Retronaut is an archive of historical photos, though not your typical photos. These images are sometimes quirky, and generally unexpected. Many have explanations about the period. View images of 1970's rock stars with their parents (Elton John, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton to name a few). See Selma's Children, What Parisian Fancy Ladies wore in 1906, history's first women aviators, and much more. Explore the site by Most Popular, Featured, or The Latest. Click on an image to view a "capsule" with other related images. Some of the images have links under them for attribution, and you can see and read even more about that topic. Under latest, this reviewer found topics that were just added five days before, so you may want to check back if you do not find what you're looking for. Warning: At the time of this review there were two topics that may be inappropriate for the classroom. Use the URL of the topic you wish to share in a new window or tab of your web browser.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Share Retronaut via Mashable with students to explore images from a given time or relating to any historic topic to get an interesting perspective not typically seen in textbooks. Create capsules using images to share for any classroom project or allow students to create their own in conjunction with classroom presentations. Use Wellcome Images, reviewed here, with over 100,000 historical images if you do not find what you want on Retronaut. Galleries are not moderated, so check before sharing on your interactive whiteboard or projector. You can always use the URL of the topic you wish to share on a new tab of your web browser.

Plan and build interactive presentations directly from your Google Drive! Share your presentation on a projector or interactive whiteboard. Your participants can contribute to your presentation using their own device! Simply install Pear Deck and go to your Google Drive. Next, click Create and choose the Pear Deck icon (in your Google Drive). An untitled Pear Deck file can be found in your drive. Click on "Untitled Pear Deck" and rename this file. To create slides, choose "Normal slide" for standard text slides that are not interactive. Add images and text blocks, and a title. Choose a "Draggable slide" to enter a question for input. Add a line or dot for participants to answer the question. Use the "Multiple Choice" slide to enter a question and answer choices. To present, click "Start Presenting." You can use the option to "Open Session Dashboard" and see all of the participants who joined the presentation. You can also choose "Open Projector View." While presenting, use the "Add a Question" tool to enter a last minute question. That can be as simple as a thumbs up or thumbs down choice to check on understanding. Make sure you "End Session" to save the results from the questions. The free account provides basic interactive questions with unlimited interactive sessions, five free presentation imports, and a maximum of 30 session participants. Help can be found by clicking on Menu and then Support. Find more information about Google Drive here.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Invite students to join. Students will not see your slides UNTIL you start the presentation. Use the presentation tools. Students' view of the presentation follows the changes you make. Be sure to become familiar with these tools before using the tools with students. As students join, their names appear in the dashboard view. Tools include Lock and Unlock Responses from students, Hide and Show Responses, Ask Again, and more. Answer the questions more than once if desired. Pear Deck maintains the results of both attempts.

It may be a good idea to open both the Session Dashboard and the Projector View before using with the students. Keep each in separate tabs (or use a different device such as a tablet for one of these). Be sure to turn off student responses and lock responses UNTIL every student has responded (so students will not be swayed by other responses or change answers). With the draggable slide, insert an image that requires quick input such as where a basketball thrown at a hoop will land, where on a timeline image a specific event occurred, or where erosion would be deposited on a river bend picture. This resource is invaluable for presenting questions for quick formative assessment of the content that students are to learn in any subject area!

Discover what influences myths from ancient cultures have on contemporary cultures. Add pizazz to your unit on mythology. Learn about famous writers. Explore the detailed lessons and plans. Visit Myths From Around the World, a writing activity that teaches about myths from fifteen regions of the world. Read the myths of ancient Greece. Find directions to write your own myth with Jane Yolen's help. Lessons instruct the learning of the characteristics of a myth through reading, comparisons, and making inferences. Peruse the unit on Heroes and Legends, which includes lesson plans for examining heroes and their common characteristics. Furthermore, there is an Inuit unit that dives into the myths, legends, and stories from the Inuit culture. Learn about the Hero Twins from the Mayan culture. There is much here to explore for all ages!This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

After you choose your level, discover one or many of the lessons to integrate into your English Language Arts or Social Studies curriculum. Choose your objectives, and find the lessons that are appropriate. Some lessons can be shared on the interactive whiteboard or projector. Others are more appropriate alone as individual work. Materials are included so much of the prep work is already done for you. To conclude the myths unit, have students create a play featuring a unique culture and a hero they create. Students will need a detailed script containing; theme, plot, settings, and characters including a hero. Go as far as you want developing props, costumes, and accompanying sounds and music. Have students present using a live presentation, video, or digital storytelling. Choose from the TeachersFirst Digital Storytelling tools, reviewed here. This site is a great reference for an after-school enrichment program on writing, reading, book clubs, or even self esteem.

Raindrop Melody Maker is an interactive music-making activity. Pressing on different colored raindrops creates different pitches sounding like a flute and a piano. Create rhythms and they will repeat. Add several rhythms together to make a masterpiece. Use the metronome to stay with the beat.

In the Classroom

Raindrop Melody Maker brings creativity to every child with instant success. Use the sound recording to create music for a piece of writing or literature. In writing class, use to illustrate the plot of a story showing beginning, building to the climax, excitement, and finish. Use this site with literature to create a melody for each character to aid in analyzing their personalities. Use a deep, repeated pattern for the villain or an easy light pattern for the innocent. Have students create a masterpiece for their written piece. In a unit on sound, have students create a 3D Raindrop Melody Maker with some other real items such as glasses, drums, bells, or rubber bands. Create music in math demonstrating the interaction between sounds, geometry, and fractions. Let the music create shapes using the different tones. On the board, create different shapes and discover the melody they create. Use with fractions to determine the amount of color utilized to create the whole unit. See if equivalent "fractions" sound the same. The possibilities are endless depending upon your students' imagination! Add music to a piece of art to employ another sense to the creation, sound!

Canva presents a simple way to design almost anything with drag and drop technology. Create custom posters, business cards, presentations, badges, flyers, charts and graphs, and more using a custom layout or a blank page. Begin by choosing the type of design you want to create. Choose pre-made templates or design your own. Upload images from your computer or your Facebook account. Change your background, add text, and personalize as desired. When complete, choose link and publish to save and download your creation as an image or PDF file or copy the link to share via URL. For creating charts and graphs go to the Features tab. There is an iPad app (free) available for this tool. Note: you must register (with email and password) before you can access this site.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Create a slideshow, invitations, or photo collages for any classroom presentation. Share what you created on your website or blog for students to review or for students who were absent. In the younger grades, teachers would be the ones creating the project. However, older students could easily create themselves! Have students create their own Canva presentations. Have students use this online tool as they would any presentation tool or image enhancing site. Use this site for research projects about famous people from the past and present. Have cooperative learning groups create presentations about science or math topics. Have students create presentations to "introduce" themselves to the class during the first week of school. Link or embed the introduction presentations on your class wiki and have others guess who they are about. Use this tool with your 1:1 art class for students to practice design principles and techniques. Create 2 to 5 circle Venn Diagrams. Share student projects with parents and others via URL. Be sure to demonstrate HOW to use this tool on your interactive whiteboard or projector.

Decorate a 3D room and make it your computer home page. Categorize and store all of your favorite sites in objects around the room. Choose a room with a view: cities, a beach, snowy mountains, jungles, and many more. Select a contemporary room, a retro room, a Disney room, or just about any theme imaginable. Establish and save the room's look, and then click objects to store favorite sites. There are also website suggestions. Browse everything in one category by clicking on the object in the room. Invite friends to your "my WebRoom" by giving them a key. Make your computer home page convenient and reflect your interests by storing all your online favorites within the objects in your "room."This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Create a "myWebRoom" for class sites used with students. Share the "my WebRoom" on your website for parents and students to use at home. Create myWebRooms, with a theme, for units your students study. To save time, have sites open in separate tabs to copy/paste urls of the resources you are planning to store in the objects around the room. Older students can create myWebRooms for characters in the book they are reading or as a literature circle project for a book they read together. Also, older students can use this tool to create a myWebRoom with a theme when researching topics or working in groups for projects or research. Use this tool to share sites with non-readers or ESL/ELL students.

Use this tool to design a comic with dialogue between two characters. Use the pre-drawn backgrounds and characters. Add a title for each scene/page and add dialogue between the two characters. These are quick and easy three page comics. You can create without an account. However, if you want to SAVE, you must register for a free account (email required).

In the Classroom

Create dialogues that introduce new content topics in your classroom. Students can use this "witty" tool to introduce topics from research or to practice a speech to be given in class. Use comics to create a dialogue discussing misconceptions in the content and a discussion of the actual facts to dispel the misunderstandings. For more ideas about using comics in the classroom see Comics Workshop for Teachers. To view more comic creator tools and ideas view this collection.